When MadCap Software announced the integration of the MadCap Flare API and HyperSTE, it got a lot of people excited. If you’re scratching your head and wondering what the heck everybody’s so worked up about, let me fill you in on some of the basics:

So what is STE?

STE stands for Simplified Technical English and was originally developed as an international standard for technical communication in the aerospace industry. When writing in STE, one must follow a specific set of rules including the use a limited vocabulary, guidelines for non-approved words and approved synonyms, and restrictions on sentence and paragraph length.

Why use STE?

The purpose of STE is to standardize style and vocabulary, improve readability, eliminate ambiguity, and allow for easier translation of technical documentation. Basically, STE requires authors to write as simply as possible to make their documentation as easy as possible to understand.

What does STE checker software do?

STE checker software, like HyperSTE, ensures compliance with corporate terminology and style guide rules as an interactive checker tool for the writer and as a quality measurement tool for the editor.

  • Checks for terminology, grammar, style, and spelling. Depending on which editing tool you use, checking can take place on element, paragraph, page, page-range, or document basis.
  • Based on the Simplified Technical English specification, but rules can be configured to customer-specific needs.
  • Supports multiple dictionaries.
  • HyperSTE’s Profile Manager allows you to create, save, and load different profiles for different types of documents.
  • Automatically differentiates different types of text (e.g., procedural vs. descriptive).
  • Feedback and reports available in multiple languages, including German, French, Spanish, Chinese, and Japanese.

MadCap Flare + HyperSTE = AWESOME

With the integration between MadCap Flare and HyperSTE (through Flare’s API), the leading quality assurance software for standardized documentation, authors can now validate the language and terminology used in their Flare content, and this makes life a whole lot easier for a whole lot of technical communicators. You can find more information about Flare’s HyperSTE plugin here and get a free trial license of HyperSTE by emailing STE@tedopres.com.